i3status(1)

NAME

i3status - Generates a status line for dzen2 or wmii

SYNOPSIS

i3status [-c configfile]

DESCRIPTION

i3status is a small program (around 500 SLOC) for filling dzen2 or wmii's status bar via its 9P pseudo filesystem. It is designed to be very efficient by issuing a very small number of systemcalls (as the bar should be updated every second or at your specified interval). This ensures that even under high load, your status bar is updated correctly and it saves a little bit of battery life by not spawning new processes every second like shell scripts does.

CONFIGURATION

wlan Specifies the name of your WLAN interface (e.g. wlan0 or ath0 or

eth1). Don't specify if you don't have a WLAN interface or if it should not be displayed.

eth Specifies the name of your ethernet interface (e.g. eth0). Don't

specify if you don't have an ethernet interface or if it should not be displayed.

wmii_path

Specifies the path to the rbar-folder of your mounted wmii pseudo file system (e.g. /mnt/wmii/rbar/). It has to be terminated by a slash.

time_format

Format for the time/date to be displayed. See strftime(3) or date(1). Don't specify it if you don't want the time to be shown.

battery

The number of the battery you want to display. This option can be specified multiple times to display multiple batteries. Don't specify it if you don't have a battery. To get the number of the specific battery, see /sys/class/power_supply/BAT*

If you want i3status to use the last full capacity instead of the design capacity of the battery, specify the f-flag, like this:

# Use the last full capacity
battery 0,f

run_watch

You can specify this directive multiple times. Each line first has a name (one word, separated by space) followed by a path (can contain wildcards, given to glob(3)). The path is the path to a PID-file which contains just the process ID of a process. i3status will then check if the process is still running and displays "yes" or "no" depending on the status. This is useful for displaying if your VPN is running, or dhclient for DHCP and so on...

order Followed by a comma separated list of the modules (run, wlan,

eth, battery, load, time) this directive specifies the order of the information which should be displayed. An order is accomplished by prefixing the files in wmii's /rbar directory with a number, that is 0VPN, 1DHCP, 2time and so on..

color If specified, color mode is on. This affects WLAN which will be

displayed red if WLAN is down and the run_watch system which will display the status in red/green.

get_ethspeed

Get current speed of the ethernet interface using the same mechanism as ethtool. You need to start i3status with root privileges to use this.

get_cpu_temperature

Gets the temperature of the first thermal zone or the specified thermal zone (if any). Use it to display your CPU temperature.

normcolors

Specifies the colors for background/border in the same format (html colorcodes) as wmii's configuration (just the last two values), that is #222222 #333333 for example. Text color will be determined automatically (red/green/#888888), depending on context.

interval

Specifies the interval in which the status bar will be updated. If you got a very slow system or feel you don't need so much information, you may want to increase it.

FILES

/etc/i3status.conf

System-wide configuration file.

EXAMPLE CONFIGURATION

wlan wlan0
eth eth0
wmii_path /mnt/wmii/rbar/
time_format %d.%m.%Y %H:%M:%S
battery 0
battery 1,f
run_watch DHCP /var/run/dhclient*.pid
run_watch VPN /var/run/vpnc*.pid
order run,wlan,eth,battery,load,time
normcolors #000000 #333333
color
get_cpu_temperature

MOUNTING WMII'S PSEUDO FILESYSTEM

As of now (February 2009, Linux 2.6.28) you can mount wmii's 9P pseudo filesystem using:

mount -t 9p -o rw,trans=unix,uname=michael,dfltuid=1000,dfltgid=50,name=michael,noauto,noextend /tmp/ns.michael.:0/wmii /mnt/wmii # Perhaps you need to load module 9pnet_fd if that does not work
modprobe 9pnet_fd

BUGS

Sometimes, i3status crashes when the wlan interface vanishes (killswitch). I haven't yet found the bug, as it is not reproducible. If you can reproduce this, please fix it and send me a patch.

SEE ALSO

strftime(3), date(1), glob(3)

AUTHORS

Michael Stapelberg <michael+i3status at stapelberg dot de>

Thorsten Toepper <atsutane at freethoughts dot de>

WEBSITE

See http://i3.zekjur.net/i3status for the newest release.

Linux MAY 2009 i3status(1)